Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit has been appointed as the 13th Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is the first woman ever to hold this position in JNU. The announcement regarding her appointment was made by outgoing VC M. Jagdesh Kumar who has now been appointed as the Chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC). Given the significance of the appointment where a woman has broken another glass ceiling in the field of education, it becomes imperative to familiarize ourselves with her background, educational qualification and work experience she brings to the table as a VC.
1. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit was born in St Petersburg, Russia (USSR), on July 15, 1962. Her mother was a professor of Tamil as well as Telugu subjects at the Leningrad Oriental Faculty Department.
2. She completed her bachelors from Presidency College, Madras in History and Social Psychology as a Gold Medallist. She completed her pre-doctoral degree in M.Phil in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 1986 and she was the topper of the university.
3. In 1990. at the young age of 28, she got her Doctorate in International relations from the JNU. "Parliament and foreign policy in India- The Nehru years" was the topic of her thesis.
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4. After obtaining her Ph.D. degree, she went to Uppsala University in Sweden to study Peace and Conflict Studies
5. She began her career as a teacher in Goa University in 1988. She then moved to Savitribai Phule University, Pune in 1993.
6. She has been closely affiliated with various prestigious organisations and bodies namely the American Studies Research Institute, Hyderabad, the Indian Association of American Studies, the All India Political Science Association, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, the Indian Secular Society, etc.
7. She is a multilinguistic, as per information posted online by the Middle East Institute India. She has command over Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi and English. She can understand Kannada, Konkani and Malayalam.
8. She has also been a member of statutory bodies such as University Grants Commission, Indian Council of Social Sciences Research.
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9. She has also authored books such as ‘Parliament and Foreign Policy in India’ (1990) and ‘Restructuring Environmental governance in Asia-Ethics and Policy’ 2003.
10. Currently, she is the VC and a Political Science professor at Department of Politics and Public Administration, Savitribai Phule University in Maharashtra. Throughout her career, she has guided 29 Ph Ds.
